[TowerTalk] Re: Importance of Amateur Radio Emergency Comms

[Jim Lux]

At 02:49 PM 9/24/2004 -0400, Tower (K8RI) wrote:


>Michael Tope wrote:
>
>>Good points, Rick. That is probably why the ARRL
>>came up with contests and the DXCC program. Both
>>programs motivate vast numbers of hams to maintain
>>
>Here in Midland County, the EOC has a multi-band ham station right in with 
>the 911 operations.  We also have rigs in the mobile EOC and all were paid 
>for by the EOC.  We also have packet in each installation and are working 
>with portable repeaters along with ATV.  We depend on tall outlying towers 
>for the digipeaters as well as long haul HF.
>
>They take the back up as well as health and welfare communications seriously.
>In an emergency they don't want the phone lines tied up with "are you OK" 
>calls.  That is one of the things that ham radio can take care of
>without putting a load on local communications.
>We have "shadows" with important personel allowing them to contact people 
>and agencies without having to tie up local lines which may not be available.
>
>Yes, emergency repeaters do have back up, but some one still has to go out 
>and make sure the generators are fueled and running.  Batteries do not 
>last forever.
>In the case of natural disasters, power to the cell towers is quite likely 
>to go and again their batteries won't last forever.

Sure.. towers for repeaters, etc., but I still think that emergency 
communications is a poor political justification for a tower and HF beam in 
a given ham's backyard.  It's too easy, politically, to come up with a 
scheme that appears to provide an equivalent capability without requiring 
the city to allow me to put a tower in the backyard.

It's not that hams don't provide a useful service (they do), it's that the 
potential for providing emergency communications is a pretty sketchy 
justification for an aesthetically undesirable tower and antenna.

Far better to generalize a bit.. the quid pro quo argument, for one. Or, 
the fact that Congress and the FCC explicitly (in the 47 CFR rules) 
acknowledge that there are other "valuable to society" functions that hams 
provide (oddly, free comm services to charitable organizations is not among 
them, even though that's where a lot of hams provide a public service).

The odds of getting a law passed to apply PRB-1 type rules to HOAs and 
CC&Rs are, in my opinion, fairly low. It's that treading on "private 
contractual rights" thing, and without a real showing of public value, or 
serious cash (i.e. satellite TV providers and TV broadcasters and the OTARD 
rules), I don't see it happening any time soon.

But, what about working to get laws that prohibit CC&Rs from including 
rules forbidding transmitters (not towers, but transmitters)?    My HOA 
used to have such a rule and with a bit of skillfull maneuvering, based on 
it being a blanket prohibition of all transmitters (including cellphones, 
garage door openers), I managed to get it removed, with no replacement 
rule.  However, it's not unheard of for an HOA to have a No amateur or CB 
transmitters rule, and that would be a lot tougher to get the HOA to 
change, since very few resident's ox is being gored.